Well-being of the Woman and Child in Niger (Bien Etre de la Femme et de l’Enfant au Niger)

Partnership’s presentation

Wellbeing of Women and Children in Niger is ALIMA’s partner in a programme for the management of malnutrition and malaria in Niger.

This joint project in Niger was destined to be a partnership between the two associations right from the outset.  Both entities are fully co-accountable for results obtained, and our respective strengths and skills complement each other perfectly in the successful completion of this project.  BEFEN is now the largest Nigerian NGO caring for malnutrition and malaria.

BEFEN’s presentation

Presentation by Dr Lamine Kolle, President of BEFEN: “BEFEN arose from the will of a group of medical students aware of the sufferings of the local population, particularly in the area of Haro Banda, the district of Niamey where the Faculty of Medicine of the University is located. Most of the residents in this area cannot bear the costs of health care and used to come to the medical students for home care, due to the lack of financial means and the insufficiency of the national health service. The requests had become so recurrent that a group of four medical students decided to rent a modest treatment room, in order to examine and to guide the patients to the adequate sanitary centers.

This private hospital attracted a growing number of medical students and doctors waiting to join the public service, who agreed to help the local population when their planning allowed them to.

As their actions further developed, the group of volunteers noted the necessity of targeting a wider public at the national level and the importance of increasing social services, especially on the sanitary level. It equally realizes the importance of schooling, which seems to have a huge influence on access to health care. Convinced that the creation of a NGO can enable the fulfillment of these ambitions and can help to solve the mobility issue for volunteers when they are asked to intervene far from the capital, the center decided to create a structure in 2001. This organization – BEFEN, le Bien-Etre de la Femme et de l’mmEnfant – aims to intervene in the domains of health and education, mainly on behalf of women and children.

So BEFEN was founded; its team currently consists mainly of doctors and is managed by an executive board of five members. “